


take me higher

by jinlian



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-02
Updated: 2017-08-02
Packaged: 2018-12-10 08:12:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11687598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jinlian/pseuds/jinlian
Summary: Victor stares at Yuuri. He wonders if he looks as confused as he feels; and he already looks at least a bit of a mess with his hair mussed from how he’d carefully styled it, his costume twisted and his jacket unzipped. Yuuri stares back. They’re both trying to find something in each other’s faces, searching and asking without words until one of them provides the answer.“What,” Victor finally demands, “does winning have to do with our getting married?”Post-season one. Victor's past and the things he lacked, and his present with the things he's gained.





	take me higher

**Author's Note:**

> take me higher  
>  _nobody else can take me higher / nobody else_

 

The first time Victor remembers meeting Irina Fyodorova, she is a stranger to him: the woman in photobooks in his father’s study, worn and forgotten where he’d kept them in the bottom drawer of his large oaken desk. Victor finds them on his own when he is four or five, sneaking into his father’s study without permission. The memory is vague—long ago as it is, but something of it remains with him anyway. He recalls the heavy smell of cedar and dust that rises from the drawer, heavy and stuck on the frame that fights against its opening. It grates wood on wood, and the pictures appear to have been thrown inside, piled and crumpled and grey, her face colorless and caught in stills that try so hard to trap her there. So when he meets her only a few months later, he knows her face because he has seen it in those photos; but in front of him she is surreal, and unfamiliar, and he cannot comprehend quite how he is supposed to know her as his mother.

 

It never really changes the more they meet over the years. He grows older, and she becomes less intimidating, alien, unreal. She calls him ‘Vitya’; he calls her ‘Mama.’ He knows intellectually what she is to him, but Victor can never quite feel as though he really _knows_ her. They live separate lives: changing and growing in their time apart. It’s a distance he feels that he can never really breach, a strangeness in a mother he only sees once every few months in a year. She will always, no matter how well he knows her, be a stranger he cannot fully understand. 

 

In an odd way how he feels about his mother is not so different now from how he feels towards the city of St. Petersburg. 

 

Victor has not been gone from Russia so long that he is totally a stranger here. St. Petersburg is still the same city on the surface, with the same streets, the same language, the same crisp taste of air that lingers sharp and cold on the tongue. A year is hardly long enough for him to forget it. Around him the people still hum with an energy waiting to be released, and the air is happy and vibrant and hushed. 

 

Victor is tired.

 

He’s always quiet on the bus rides home. They’re always the last to leave the rink after the sun has long set outside, rushing to catch the final bus from its stop one block away. This is the St. Petersburg he knows best now. It’s dark when he wakes and dark when he leaves work for home. A year later Victor knows a St. Petersburg painted in the blacks and blues of night, in the flashes of color blurred in street lamps and passing cars and the hint of stars above. The world is dark and cold, as far as Victor can tell. The only light he knows is the dim lights in the bus, street lights and headlights flashing by outside in a blur to interrupt that blackness, his own eyes fluttering as he leans on Yuuri’s shoulders as the two of them are alone on the bus ride home –- Yuuri who stifles his own yawns and leans back in contented silence.

 

Victor is tired, as he always is. And tonight the silence is different.

 

It’s deafening on their way home from the rink. This quiet is a comfort usually, as they wind down together with their own thoughts and in their own minds, preparing for the ritual of the end of every day. Tonight, however, Victor feels aware of every moment that passes that he says nothing and Yuuri does not look at him, every bump of the bus over a rock or a groove. Victor rubs his forehead and counts the streets flash by. One, two — turn left here, turn right there, one, two. It helps him, this steady chant in his head, this sense of a pattern. At least when he looks at Yuuri and Yuuri does not look back, there’s something else in his head instead. 

 

Yuuri leans his head against Victor’s shoulder and yawns. Victor stares out the window and rests his cheek on Yuuri’s head. 

 

He’s always tracked his life in numbers. 

 

There is order in numbers when things are overwhelming. Victor doesn’t quite know why this is nor when it started. He knows only that when he waited far longer than the other children for his father to pick him up from the rink that when he counted the minutes, time didn’t seem so long. Victor could say, there are only twenty-four hours in a day, and Papa only made me wait for two of them. One-twelfth of a day is small. Victor could count each penny saved for his next pair of boots, or the plane ticket to the Junior Skate America, and he could say, see? We have enough for it after all. He could count each gold medal for interviews, the silent rhythm of a program and four rotations in the air. Victor could know he’s kissed three other men, but only once has he looked at someone mumbling drunk in an unknown language and felt so very much _alive._

 

Eight years since his father died. Five since he last spoke to his mother. One since Victor first felt alive again. And two months since Victor has relearned St. Petersburg and waited for the day that finally, finally he can stop counting. 

 

It’s the loud jangle of the keys as Yuuri digs them from his sports bag that finally wakes Victor from his mantra. He’s tracked the steps from the bus stop to their apartment door — one hundred seven, the same as yesterday — and is interrupted by the sound of the opening door and keys thrown sharply against the kitchen counter. Victor gives up his count and eyes the keys Yuuri has tossed aside as he takes off his shoes with an equally hurried refusal to care. The kitchen counter is close to the door. Victor rests there, elbows to the surface and heels of his palms against his eyes, and feels the surface hard against his arms.

 

It’s not usually so quiet, and he can’t quite figure out why. There’s no less noise than usual, really.

 

“Is your knee bothering you?”

 

Yuuri’s voice comes from Victor’s right side, the hallway that leads to the bedroom. The old injury from his junior days has always given him occasional pain. Yuuri’s grown aware of this in practices when Victor stops to catch a breath and massage his muscles, and when Yuuri lifts his knee and kisses it beneath the sheets. Victor grunts in affirmation.

 

“There’s ice in the freezer,” Yuuri offers helpfully. 

 

Stars bloom and fade in his palms, and Victor doesn’t respond.

 

It’s true that his knee does bother him from day to day. It’s a dull pain, though in the back of his mind — easily ignored. Not enough to ring an alarm.Victor will ice his knees before crawling in bed and use a heating pad while he reads a few pages before falling asleep; surely this isn’t why he’s tired. This can’t be why things feel so… _quiet._

 

There’s silence from Yuuri in return. Victor knows he’s still standing there. He’s waiting, moving a few steps to greet Makkachin who comes bounding from the bedroom, glancing at Victor nervously as though his stares will interrupt his thoughts. Yuuri’s waiting for an answer. But when Victor doesn’t give one, Yuuri has no choice but to find one himself — which he does, by refusing to ask again and by leaving Victor space in his seclusion. 

 

“Okay.” Yuuri is quiet, his voice hesitant. “Well — I can take Makkachin out if you want, and then I’m going to take a shower and get ready for bed. Just let me know if you need anything.” 

 

_Need anything._ Victor looks up.

 

The words slip from his tongue before he can stop them.  “Yuuri, when are we getting married?”

 

One hand resting on the wall as he leans over to pet Makkachin, Yuuri freezes.

 

It hangs in the air. Victor’s words are damp and thick and heavy, pressing tension into Yuuri’s white-knuckled hand on the wall and his shoulders raised and pinched beneath his shirt. He twists the ring on his finger, stares at Yuuri’s back, and waits. 

 

Yuuri turns, and Victor can see the shock behind his eyes. They're wide and unblinking as he looks almost desperately for a place that’s anywhere but Victor’s face. Perhaps the question was unfair, Victor thinks, at this time of night, after a day so long; but he’s tired of waiting. He’s tired of not knowing. Yuuri licks his lips and bites where he usually does until they bleed. 

 

Victor is so, so tired.

 

“Victor?”

 

Victor waits.  Yuuri breathes a nervous laugh, and Victor feels something in his stomach sink to the bottom and settle. It’s an inappropriate response — even Yuuri knows it, from the increasingly desperate look of panic on his face. Victor knows that it’s just Yuuri, wonderful nervous Yuuri trying to ease the tension that _surely_ he must feel, too. And Victor feels the tension in his forehead where he frowns; because he doesn’t want this response, but it’s something so very expected from Yuuri, and Victor loves the sound of his laugh. 

 

“Where is this coming from?” Yuuri asks.

 

And God, that isn’t _fair_.

 

“I want to know when we’re getting married.” Victor is quiet as he stares straight back at Yuuri, who can’t quite look Victor in the eye.

 

“Well, I—“ Yuuri glances up at the ceiling as though someone will crash through it and offer him an escape. When it doesn’t happen, he eyes the door instead and Makkachin’s leash hanging next to it, then Makkachin herself. “We’ve been busy. I haven’t really thought about… I mean I have, but — you already have a lot on your mind. I didn’t want to b — I haven’t wanted to distract you.”

 

_“Distract_ me?” Victor’s voice is incredulous. The echoed words are like a slap, and he feels it tingling on his cheek. “I came _back_ for you, Yuuri. Only you.”

 

Yuuri closes his eyes. Victor has spent months studying Yuuri’s face — every line, every twitch, every crease. As callous as Yuuri often is with his own feelings, the study of the _why_ of Yuuri Katsuki is a much more intensive process, and Victor thinks — he _thinks_ — that he can read it now. There’s the crease between his eyes when he’s upset, the twitch in his jaw when he’s biting his cheek because oh, oh he’s screwed up. Victor swallows back the urge to move, because if he does, he’ll reach for an embrace and ruin any chance of discovering which one of them has screwed up anything at all.

 

So tired as Victor is, he makes sure his voice is gentle as he continues talking. Tired as he is, he has to force it. “I wouldn’t have even come back at all if it weren’t for you,” Victor tells Yuuri, and it feels so good to say it aloud that he doesn’t bother holding the rest back at all. “You’re the only reason I’m happy on the ice now for the first time in years.”

 

Yuuri’s eyes fly open. Victor has caught him by surprise. He stares across the room, finally meeting Victor’s own even gaze, and doesn’t quite notice the slack in his jaw until he speaks.

 

“I thought you wanted…”

 

“What,” Victor asks, and it’s sharp and rough and hurt and he has to start again. “What did you think I wanted, Yuuri?”

 

Yuuri visibly flinches. Victor curls his knuckles against the countertop to keep himself from moving. 

 

“That’s not—” Yuuri stumbles over his answer. “You can’t expect—”

 

Victor doesn’t know what he expects, and apparently Yuuri doesn’t really, either, because he bites his lip and doesn’t finish. There’s a distance separating them that seems much longer than it is: the kitchen island countertop between them, Yuuri framed in the darkness of the hallway. Yuuri twists the ring on his finger, stares at it, and finally swallows something back and speaks in a voice that’s quiet and uncertain.

 

“…We didn’t talk much about it. After Barcelona.”

 

“No,” Victor responds slowly. This, at least, is easy. “No, we didn’t.” 

 

He frowns. Had they needed to talk? “We stood in front of the Catedral de Barcelona,” Victor continues. “We had _sex_ in Barcelona. Not for the first time, either. And we’re definitely still doing that. We exchanged _rings._ You put it on my ring finger, and I put the other one on yours.”

 

Even in the dim light of their half-lit kitchen and the darkened hallway, Victor can see that Yuuri has turned red, a bright shade of pink that reaches to the tips of his ears. Yuuri takes a deep breath and rubs a hand over his face.

`

Neither of them speaks.

 

Victor feels something tight in his chest, a heaviness that doesn’t belong. It settles there: easing around his heart and gripping tight, sighing as it finds the bruises still left over from long ago. Unwanted. Uncomfortable. It had been banished, perhaps, while Victor had not even realized; and now that it comes creeping back he finds that it is far too familiar, a feeling that had latched on in his chest for far, far too long.

 

“What is this?” Victor asks, and even he’s not sure to what “this” he is referring. “What are these rings, Yuuri? Sometimes — ”

 

Sometimes Victor finds that as much as Yuuri wears his emotions on his face, he’s still a total mystery. Sometimes Victor finds himself misstepping: his desperate attempt to motivate Yuuri at the Cup of China, or his failure to see Yuuri’s spiraling, swirling attempt at self-sabotage when he’d told Victor that it was time to end things between them just one night after Victor remembers getting engaged. Victor tries, as much as he can, and he knows that he’s never going to be able to intercept all of what makes Yuuri _Yuuri._ He doesn’t want to — but sometimes that’s exactly what makes him feel as though he’s being left behind.

 

Yuuri is passionate and impulsive. Sometimes his feelings burst forward in waves, and sometimes tries to hide them away. Victor pokes and waits and offers and often Yuuri answers, but maybe —

 

Maybe they _had_ needed to talk after all. 

 

“…Yuuri.” Victor looks down at his hands, at the ring warm and solid on his finger. “Do you want to marry me? Because I want to marry you.”

 

Yuuri jerks forward and looks straight at Victor. “Of course,” Yuuri says, “of _course,”_ and the weight leaps from Victor’s chest as he looks back up to Yuuri’s eyes. _“Yes,_ I want to marry you, Victor. But — ”

 

_“But,”_ says Victor quietly, and it settles hard and heavy back in place.

 

At last he moves. Victor pushes away from the countertop and reaches instead for Makkachin, whose dropped tail and quiet nudges with her nose indicate that she feels the discomfort in the room as much as either of them. Yuuri doesn’t finish. He lets Victor go. Victor can feel Yuuri’s eyes on him as he passes by on his way back to the front door where he’s already kicked off his shoes just a few minutes ago. 

 

“I’ll be back.” He kneels down and wraps his arms around Makkachin’s neck. Victor realizes then, as he presses his face against her fur, that he’s forgotten her leash—it’s across the room, left on the living room couch on the other side of where Yuuri’s standing. 

 

She licks his cheek.

 

Makkachin won’t run, Victor thinks, and he stands and takes her with him out the door without a word.

 

———

 

When Victor comes back inside, Yuuri is already in bed.

 

The bedroom light is still on, but Yuuri is curled up on his side of the bed with the heavy blankets pulled past his chin to his nose. His hair is wet, Victor realizes from the reflection of the closet mirror as he sheds his own clothes. Had he been outside with Makkachin that long? He’d waited more time, perhaps, to breathe the cold St. Petersburg winter. But Yuuri usually likes long showers. Surely Victor hadn’t been outside _that_ long — unless Yuuri had hurried so that he’d be asleep before Victor came inside.

 

“Yuuri,” Victor says quietly, “Yuuri, are you awake?”

 

There’s no answer. He’s used to Yuuri’s wriggles and murmurs in a half-sleeping stupor, arms and legs thrown across the bed and wrapped around Victor’s waist . That Yuuri doesn’t move at all is telling.

 

“Yuuri,” Victor repeats. 

 

Yuuri twitches beneath the covers. He pulls the blankets further over his face. Victor sits next to him and settles on the same side of the bed, on top of the blankets where Yuuri is under them, with a hand rested lightly on Yuuri’s head. 

 

“Yuuri.”

 

There’s something meditative in his name. Victor likes the taste of Yuuri’s name on his tongue, sweet and easy as it always rolls from his lips, through his teeth and flicked against the roof of his mouth. It’s dry this time. He tries one last time and pulls it past the tightness in his throat.

 

_“Yuuri.”_

 

Yuuri’s hair is still damp between his fingertips.

 

It’s just like Yuuri to be stubborn.  With Yuuri remaining stone-still beneath the blankets, Victor supposes that he’s lost this round. He lets out whatever sound it is that’s caught itself in his throat — some sort of laughter, breathless and rough, because it’s only ever with Yuuri that Victor knows how it feels to lose.  He starts to pull back. But there’s a hand on his wrist that keeps him from standing, and Victor freezes and stares back into Yuuri’s now-open eyes: bright and red and wet, like the color in his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, and _Oh,_ Victor realizes. Oh. 

 

“I’m sorry,” someone whispers. He doesn’t know which one of them it is.

 

Yuuri lets go, but Victor still feels his hand there, branded brightly on his skin. Usually when Victor feels this wild urge to _hold_ Yuuri, to fling himself forward and take every chance he has to touch, to feel him, to wind their bodies together soft and warm he takes it. Yuuri would let him, Victor thinks, if he did it. He trails his thumb down Yuuri’s cheek and stares into his eyes instead.Yuuri would let him.

 

That Yuuri lets him at all Victor thinks sometimes is a miracle. Not that other people _wouldn’t_ let him; Victor is well aware that plenty of people would welcome an embrace from eight-time world champion Victor Nikiforov. But Victor _wants_ Yuuri. And Yuuri, for his part, doesn’t want only the world champion. Victor drops his hand and climbs over him, clambers across the bed to the other side where cold and empty sheets are waiting for him. It should be enough that he has this: happiness, life, love, all in abundance more than Victor has ever known. _“You don’t have to say anything,”_ he can hear Yuuri saying. _“Just stay close to me.” Enough._

 

Victor turns off the light. 

 

There’s empty space on his back beneath the sheets. The mattress dips behind him and then rises; Yuuri shifts then stills. Victor twists the sheet in his hand, settles on his side, and draws the blanket to his chest.

 

He blinks against the darkness of the room.

 

“…Hey, Victor,” Yuuri breathes.

 

Victor swallows, breathes in, licks his lips. With their curtains drawn, the black of night especially this time of winter can be impossibly heavy. He breathes out.

 

“…I’m here.”

 

There’s a moment in which it seems that’s all that Yuuri wanted. Just that simple reassurance of Victor’s presence, or maybe Yuuri’s response in his own way to Victor’s attempts to call to him just a few moments ago. “It’s still so cold outside, Yuuri,” Victor says. His voice is impossibly light. “Perhaps I should have someone build a hot spring in the—”

 

Yuuri grabs onto Victor so suddenly that Victor interrupts himself with air that hisses sharply through his teeth. There’s a hand on his stomach, Victor’s muscles tense beneath Yuuri’s wide-spread fingers. He wonders if when they wake in the morning he will see a bruise on Yuuri’s nose; there was certainly enough of a jarring bump against his spine. _“Victor,”_ Yuuri mumbles against the bare skin of Victor’s back, and Victor bites his tongue to keep himself from crying out.

 

“Yes,” he says instead. He’s never been so grateful that Yuuri can’t see his face. “Yes.”

 

Yuuri’s breath is hot against Victor’s skin. Victor can feel it in Yuuri’s quick and heavy breathing, in the rhythm of his chest rising and falling. It’s hot, it’s sharp, dancing lightly over the shivers that trail their way down Victor’s spine and vanishes before he breathes again. _Stay close to me._ Yuuri touches his lips to Victor’s back and grips more tightly around Victor’s waist. This is how Yuuri talks. It’s in all his breaths, in his touches, in his movements and the gestures he makes. He says it best on the ice; there’s no doubt about that. But they’re not on the ice now, and the most Victor can do is guess and to do his best to understand. Yuuri had asked him not to speak, Victor reminds himself. He’d forgotten in his exhaustion. But now he’s been given another chance, and Victor knows better than to speak — just to stay close, because he doesn’t want to leave.

 

The last thing that Victor thinks before he falls asleep is of the feeling of being locked tight in Yuuri’s embrace. Every touch makes him shiver, and he never, ever wants to wake.

 

* * *

 

“Keep your chin up, Victor,” Artem says as he straightens Victor’s tie. He’s not looking into Victor’s eyes, too focused on the knot and the people milling throughout the room. They’re indistinguishable, Victor thinks, in their identical black clothes and identical somber expressions and the pitying way they tell him, _I’m so sorry for your loss._ “You already chose not to speak during the funeral. Don’t be even more hysterical by crying now.”

 

He pats Victor’s shoulders, brushes down the lapels of his jacket. Victor doesn’t say anything. _Hysterical,_ Artem says, as though it would be out of line for a son to cry at his own father’s passing. Victor already thinks he’s _hysterical_ enough by not even feeling an urge to cry at all. He wishes he could break down and bawl in the middle of the room; at least he’d feel some sense of normalcy. 

 

“I’ll try,” Victor says instead, and turns away without thanking Artem for the attention to his tie. He hadn’t _asked_ for the attention. Artem doesn’t notice the sarcasm.

 

Victor recognizes only some of the people in the room. A few he knows from their visits to his father’s house, business meetings held behind the closed and heavy oaken door to the study. They rarely stayed long, but they always talked loudly. Everyone recognizes _him_ , of course, though not everyone acknowledges it. They’re all too busy competing over who can look the saddest, apologize the best, and swirl the wine in their half-drunk glasses in the most polite and thoughtful manner. Victor does his best to remember their names, just in case they approach him: Adam, Katerina, Valentin, Grisha, Alexei. He doesn’t know their last names. He only knows what his father called them. 

 

“Would you like a glass?” someone asks him. Victor turns, interrupted from his attempts to dredge more names from memory. He supposes he’s about to be put to the test already, unless it’s one of the strangers who knew his father from the office or the golf course or wherever else it was that Victor never went. He isn’t sure if it’d be better either way; it isn’t just a speech that Victor doesn’t want to give.

 

“No,” he answers, “thank you.” 

 

“You look like you need a drink,” says Irina.

 

Victor looks at her, then looks again. And in the silence his eyes begin to burn. 

 

“You seem surprised.” Irina stares at him, arm still extended with the wine glass. Victor realizes with a jolt that they’ve done their hair the same way. Hers is shorter, but she too has braided it twice away from her face, tucked carefully behind her ears and clipped the rest at the nape of her neck. 

 

“You weren’t at the funeral.” Had she done this on purpose? It’s unmistakable, the same platinum blonde hair and the shape of their jaws. The braids make it even more so; Victor itches to tear his out. “Should I _not_ be surprised?”

 

She lowers her arm with the wine glass slowly, as though Victor might take it from her on its way down, and smiles. It’s a crooked smile, wry and resigned, and she shrugs. “It didn’t work out between us,” Irina acknowledges (obvious — so obvious, so unnecessary), “but I did care for your father very much, for a time. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry that he’s dead.”

 

“Yes.” Victor hates standing there: his tie too tight, his braids too like hers, his shoes pinching the blisters still healing from a day breaking in his brand-new skating boots. “Thank you.”

 

At least she feels sorry for that.

 

And maybe it doesn’t really matter, in the end. They stare at each other until Irina breaks away. There’s a smile of farewell on her lips and a promise to talk again later as she goes; andperhaps she doesn’t need to be sorry. She leaves again, her hair swinging bright across the black and white patterns of her dress. She was never _here_ in the first place. And neither really was his father. Victor has something that’s his already, eternal and solid: the ice he hates to leave, the cold bite on his cheeks and fingertips, the thrill of a jump and the cheer of a crowd. He’s lucky that it’s been his life for so long — far longer than any person has ever been. Yakov shouldn’t be so surprised when he finds Victor sleeping beneath a bench at the rink the next morning, really.

 

“Your face is too dark so early in the morning,” Victor observes as he sits up and runs his fingers through his hair. “You need more sleep, Yakov. It might get stuck looking like that, and you’re old enough that you only have a few years left before it’s stuck forever.”

 

Yakov turns a predictably furious shade of red, and Victor doesn’t stop himself from laughing. Yakov’s whole head turns red when he's angry. Victor discovered that early on in their days as coach and student, and he’d found it hilarious as a newly-turned seventeen-year-old. It’s too easy to turn Yakov that color. Victor likes to think he’s made an art of it.

 

“What in the _world_ are you doing here?” Yakov demands. “You should have left when the rink was locked hours ago. You shouldn’t be here at all!”

 

“What a strange thing for a coach to say. Are you firing me?” 

 

His shoulder hurts from sleeping on it. Victor pops it in its socket, swings his arm in a circle. 

 

Yakov opens his mouth to retort but makes none. His eyes have fallen just off to Victor’s side, on the black suit and tie tossed messily inside Victor’s half-open gym bag tossed aside on the ground. Yakov closes his mouth. He looks back at Victor and takes in the wrinkled t-shirt and the braids falling out of his hair.

 

“You should be with your family.”

 

“My father is dead, Yakov,” Victor reminds him. “That’s why we had a funeral.”

 

“Well, at least you shouldn’t be sleeping _here!”_ Yakov gestures to the ceiling, the overhead lights still dimmed so early in the morning. “Don’t you have grandparents? An uncle, an aunt?”

 

Victor finds that he’s surprised that Yakov hasn’t asked about his mother, and he feels a swell of gratitude for his coach’s neglect. Victor smiles, pulling himself at last up off the floor.

 

“My grandparents live in Orenburg,” he explains. “Their flight leaves this morning. I can’t move rinks and coaches, not all over again. It’s mid-season, Yakov. We’re halfway through the Grand Prix Series.”

 

Yakov looks as though he wants to argue. He doesn’t.

 

“My uncle lives in Pargolovo. It’s closer, but he has three children. It’d be hard for them to adjust to someone new. And you know my schedule — they can’t support that.” Victor bends down and stuffs his tie back in his bag. He had the mind to include an extra pair of sweatpants. He pulls those out along with his skates. “Anyway, I’m eighteen, and I have some money saved. I can find an apartment near the rink. It’s more convenient for everyone in the end.”

 

Yakov sighs. He grinds his teeth, scratches his head, and pulls on the hair around his bald spot. Victor takes off his shoes and unlaces his skates and thinks about warning Yakov away from the habit. 

 

“Well, you won’t find an apartment today,” Yakov grunts. “And you’re certainly not allowed to keep sleeping _here._ You’ll stay with Lilia and me until you find a place of your own. Just don’t take this as any sort of favoritism — you’ll be working even harder with us, and it’s just until you can move all your things from your father’s house, understand?”

 

He’s left his boot loose and untied, laces spilling onto the floor where he can step on them easily if he walks. Victor only has one on, anyway. He swallows, forgets the boot in his hand and his other cold, sock-clad foot on the ground, and straightens. “I understand,” Victor says. This is a kindness, one greater than he could ever have expected from Yakov, who is impersonal and gruff and hard as the ice is cold. Victor’s fingers twitch. He balls his hands into fists and shoves them in the pockets of his sweatpants. 

 

_Until._ It’s good as well that Yakov has given him _until._ The offer isn’t unconditional, isn’t permanent, and Victor is thankful for it. This way Victor will be the one with the freedom to leave instead. _He’ll_ be the one to pack his things and go, to bid farewell on his own terms, and to leave without any expectations that someone else must stay. 

 

_Until I find my own apartment,_ Victor reminds himself as he finishes lacing his boots. Yakov has decided that the conversation is over, it seems, and is already walking away. That’s good. Even an apartment is an easy thing to leave, not like a house — like his father’s, sitting empty now despite still being full of all its furnishings, wooden and dark and cold. An apartment is good. Victor pushes open the rail guard door and steps onto the rink. 

 

Maybe one day he’ll have a house again, he lets himself think. Maybe. Years from now, it’ll be solid and warm and home, and Victor will fill it with all the things that he wants and loves. He pushes against the ice — _one, two_ — and closes his eyes. If there’s anything that will stay, it will be skating.

 

He can build himself a house of gold.

 

* * *

 

The hard wood of the bathroom door presses hard and uncomfortable against Victor’s spine. _Yuuri’s too into this,_ he thinks at the feeling of a hand running across his waists it fumbles for a belt buckle that isn’t there. Yuuri hums, low and throaty as he mouths across the curve of Victor’s neck just above the collar of his costume. There hadn’t been much time to try it on before Worlds, between the time Victor had to produce and choreograph a new short program and the commission for a fitting costume. This is the first time he’s worn it, and it itches. He’s not the only one who wants it off. 

 

_“Yuuri,”_ Victor breathes. He tilts his head against the wall.

 

It isn’t like Yuuri to get so invested in the character for _Eros_ before he’s even stepped into the rink. There are still two groups to skate before Victor’s and Yuuri’s, and while Victor had anticipated some nervousness from Yuuri for their first competition actually skating _against_ each other, he hadn’t quite expected… this. Victor bites his lower lip and fights to keep his eyes open as Yuuri’s hand brushes between his legs, stares at the cold lights above and the dirty white tiles and the tiny cracks above the pipes.

 

“Victor,” Yuuri mumbles.

 

“Yuuri, stop.”

 

He stops.

 

More accurately, Yuuri freezes. They both freeze, really. Victor struggles to catch his breath and to calm his nerves (at least, he supposes, at least he was too stressed and surprised for the biggest problem he _could_ be having to be an issue). Yuuri pauses with his lips still on Victor’s neck, a hand on his thigh and the other resting on the door. At least no one’s bound to come into the bathroom with both of them holding the door shut.

 

Victor closes his eyes. 

 

“I’m sorry,” Yuuri whispers. He doesn’t move.

 

Whatever it is that’s so heartbreaking in that whisper has Victor jerking forward, surprising Yuuri into a stumble backwards that Victor catches with both his hands on Yuuri’s cheeks. “Cruel,” Victor says, and his voice is hoarse and cracked. “Far, far too cruel, Yuuri. You’ve made a mess of me. You can’t apologize like that.”

 

He brushes a thumb over Yuuri’s cheekbone and sees that Yuuri is about to cry. 

 

And this is what Victor doesn’t _understand._ Yuuri’s actions don’t line up, not to Victor. Yuuri’s like this when there’s something he wants to say, words that he just can’t find. He expresses them, best as he can, through his actions: passionate, impulsive, and god, _god,_ Victor loves him. Buthow can Victor possibly read him when Yuuri jumps from one inconsistency to the next, from a ring to a breakup, from a hand down his pants to tears in his eyes? How can Victor possibly give Yuuri what he needs when he knows he’ll be blindsided at every moment? Staying close — well, he can do that. But Victor doesn’t know how to do it _right._

 

“Yuuri, love.” Victor pushes the loose hair back away from Yuuri’s face where it’s fallen from his carefully brushed and gelled styling. “It’s only a short time until our group. Wait until after we’ve—”

 

Yuuri grabs Victor by the shoulders and pushes him back against the door.

 

_“No,”_ he blurts. “How can you tell me _I’m_ cruel? How am I supposed to skate like this today? They should have had you go last, they should have — not made me the one to —”

 

“To what?” Victor is bewildered. He feels as though he’s missing something obvious, the reason for Yuuri’s panicked intensity, but he doesn’t have a clue what it could be. “Yuuri?”

 

Yuuri doesn’t look Victor in the eyes. He lowers his head, shoulders shaking and his hands still braced firmly on Victor’s arms.

 

“I’ve always wanted to skate on the same ice as you. _Against_ you, on equal level, in competition one day. But having drawn to skate last, right after you — if I perform like I usually do, I’ll look like an idiot for thinking I deserve to be there. But if I skate the way I want to skate, everyone will talk about how you took too long away to waste your time on me, and your comeback was a bad idea. It won’t have the same — the same surprise, the impact. How can I be the one to do that to you? If you’re barely even happy as you are?”

 

It’s the closest Yuuri has ever come to breaching the topic of Victor’s admission from one month ago in the dim light of their kitchen. Victor doesn’t quite know how to respond.

 

“I _want_ to win,” Yuuri whispers, “of course I do, even against you. It would be a dream. But as much as I want to marry you, I can’t ask you to do poorly nor want you to look bad, either. I can’t make things even worse for you. So for now I just wanted to feel less… stressed, both of us, I don’t know—”

 

He’s an impressive shade of red as he turns away to bury his face in his hand. 

 

_As much as I want to marry you._

 

Now Victor _really_ feels lost. “What in the world do you mean?”

 

He counts two seconds of silence.

 

“… Eh?”

 

Yuuri looks up, still red but confused enough to be forgetting his embarrassment, at least momentarily.“To win against you, Victor,” he says slowly. “Wouldn’t it mean we can get married?”

 

Victor doesn’t think he’s ever felt so left out of something before in his life.

 

_“What?”_

 

“I—” Yuuri turns a fresh shade of red all over again and yanks his remaining hand away from Victor’s shoulder. “Ehh? What do you mean, _what?_ Wasn’t it your — eh?!”

 

Victor stares at Yuuri. He wonders if he looks as confused as he feels; and he already looks at least a bit of a mess with his hair mussed from how he’d carefully styled it, his costume twisted and his jacket unzipped. Yuuri stares back. They’re both trying to find something in each other’s faces, searching and asking without words until one of them provides the answer.

“What,” Victor finally demands, “does winning have to do with our getting married?”

 

Yuuri jerks back. He opens his mouth, closes it, then opens it again.

 

“You said — in Barcelona, the night before the short program, you said — ”

 

“I said you had to _win_ before we could get married?” 

 

Victor wonders when the last time was that his voice sounded so high-pitched. He stares at Yuuri in disbelief, wracking his memory. He’d been drinking that night, but he can’t imagine his even joking about such a thing, drunk or not. And he’d hardly been _drunk —_ he’d only had a beer or two at dinner. Victor would know if he’d said such a thing, poor as his memory is, because he remembers everything about that night. He remembers the feeling of shock when Yuuri had dragged him into the jewelry store, a feeling that had persisted all the way to the moment that ring had been put on his finger almost half an hour later in front of the church. He remembers how his hands had been shaking when he’d reached back for Yuuri — so much that he hadn’t noticed whether Yuuri’s hands were shaking, too. Even the dinner that night Victor remembers. The food they ate, the warm rush that he’d felt when Chris had noticed his ring, the betrayal that Yuuri hadn’t remembered the banquet at Sochi all this time —

 

“‘Don’t get the wrong idea. This is an engagement ring,’” Yuuri says quietly, and Victor snaps back to the present. “‘We’ll get married after he wins gold.’”

 

…And then it clicks.

 

Victor almost laughs with relief at the revelation. It’s a breathless relief, one that’s just glad to know the problem that needs solving. He _almost_ laughs, but he doesn’t, because the look on Yuuri’s face is so drawn, his eyes turned to the floor and his lower lip drawn between his teeth. Victor swallows back the urge.

 

“Yuuri,” he says, “ah, _blyat, net_ , I — Yuuri, I wasn’t … I didn’t mean it the way you think it.”

 

Yuuri blinks at the floor. He doesn’t look up, but Victor can see his eyes focus. There’s surprise in the tightening of his jaw and the very slight lift of his eyebrows, and — Victor brushes his fingertips beneath Yuuri’s chin, gentle and questioning. Yuuri twitches, but he doesn’t pull away. Victor tilts Yuuri’s head up.

 

He wants to be watching Yuuri’s face when he says this. It’s the best that Victor has for him sometimes, in the strange way that Yuuri communicates best through the curve of his arms and his fingertips, in the circles that he makes on the ice. Even then Yuuri’s silent language is wrapped in its own layers. English might be enough to bridge the two sometimes. Sometimes it isn’t: like here, Victor _finally_ understands, his meaning crossing from Russian to English and back into Japanese before it finally settles into Yuuri’s wordless understanding. But even if he could reach across each bridge with the right words — if he could curl his tongue into the Japanese of Yuuri’s native home, if he could take every sweetly-worded syllable he knows in Russian and paint them on the sky — Victor thinks that sometimes, sometimes even then he might still have to take one last step across a final stone. 

 

“I was _happy.”_ Victor’s voice cracks in his throat, and he realizes then that there’s something hot in his eyes and hot on his cheeks. He stops, startled, and reaches to touch them only to realize that Yuuri has gotten there first. “I wanted everyone to know I _love_ you. And you were going to win — it was my faith in you, I meant only that of course you were going to win then, of _course,_ and they all should have been prepared for that. We were going to get married after the Grand Prix Final, where you were going to win. But it isn’t as though we were going to have, what do you call it, a shotgun wedding, unless you wanted one. I’d marry you even here. You had to stay focused on the Grand Prix Final. And you _should_ have won, _lastochka_ , your —”

 

Words aren’t _hard_ for Victor. They shouldn’t be. They never _have_ been. He speaks three languages fluently, a fourth at least conversationally, and he can recite his favorite passages and monologues with only a few minutes of study. Knowing the right thing to say before a camera is second nature. Studying a person and to know what makes them happy makes every word come easily. But Yuuri makes a mess out of him. Yuuri renders every language pointless and Victor’s tongue thick and clumsy. He’s too aware of it. His cheeks are hot beneath Yuuri’s hands, and Victor wonders suddenly if he ought to be saying the rest in Japanese.

 

Or maybe he should just stop speaking altogether, because despite his babbling desperation, Yuuri’s still crying, too. 

 

“I didn’t even propose to you properly, and you had to say something like that,” Yuuri bites out. His hand is still on Victor’s cheek, and Victor, in confused desperation to do something about both their tears, settles a palm as well in a perfect mirror on Yuuri’s face.

 

“You walked me all the way to the cathedral,” Victor reminds him. From Fira de Santa Llúcia to Catedral de Barcelona, every step he took conscious of the rings Yuuri had been clutching tightly in his hands. 

 

“I know. I know! But I wasn’t going to _say_ it, not yet, in case you didn’t — well, I wanted to do it right, after I — but I didn’t win!” 

 

Yuuri turns his head away, rips his cheek from Victor’s grasp and grinds his teeth. Victor lets his arm drop back to his side.

 

“I didn’t win,” Yuuri repeats, weaker and a little more desperate. “So I had to wait. That’s what I thought. Japanese Nationals doesn’t count — I’ve won the title before, and it’s not international. And even at Four Continents when I won, you weren’t there, or Chris, or Yurio. And it was just because J.J. had only just begun to train the quad loop in his program. It wasn’t consistent yet. If he’d landed it, I’m sure he would have won. And then you asked me when we’re getting married — you asked _me!_ As though I could make time move any faster, and as though you hadn’t been the one to say it in the first place!”

 

It’s so clear, it’s all suddenly so clear, and Victor puts a hand to his forehead and understands where they’d gone wrong. 

 

“I suppose I did say it.” Has he ever felt so faint?

 

“You did,” Yuuri agrees — and then he flushes right to his ears and claps both hands over his mouth, mumbling through his fingers. “Only you didn’t — no, I had it wrong all this time. And now I have to face off against you here. I had it wrong, and I still have to skate against youeither to fail or to make you fail, and I have no confidence that when I step onto the ice I will know what I want to do.”

 

In the frozen silence that follows, the bathroom door hits Victor in the back. He doesn’t stumble, though he does a little when it swings forward even harder a second time. Victor moves one foot forward and plants himself firmly in place. He doesn’t look away from Yuuri once.

 

Someone knocks.

 

“You’re interrupting,” Victor says loudly. 

 

Yuuri, Victor notices, is capable of turning a very impressive range of the color red.

 

“They’re going to think we’re — ”

 

_“Weren’t_ we?” Victor challenges, and he grabs Yuuri by the waist and pulls him so close their foreheads nearly bruise. _“Aren’t_ we? You have a performance soon, Yuuri. And your coach will be very disappointed in you if after all this time, you still refuse to be the best that you can be.”

 

And somehow, without any idea of how it starts, they’re kissing. Victor’s back slams against the door one more time as Yuuri surges forward, a final emphatic refusal to allow anyone else into their space. There’s a hand twisting hard in his hair, teeth on his lips, and Victor tastes desperate breathing as he does his best not to let any of this go. 

 

“You’re right,” Yuuri gasps against Victor’s lips. Victor doesn’t like it when they’re not kissing; he follows Yuuri as Yuuri drops his chin, and there, he can taste a smile. Yuuri presses his forehead to Victor’s and allows him one more. “You’re right, Victor — stop — we should stop. We have to skate soon.”

 

“I don’t care,” Victor mumbles, and he kisses Yuuri again.

 

He’s rewarded with a smile, but Yuuri bites his own lower lip and pulls away one more time. They stay close, though. Yuuri closes his eyes, and Victor keeps his face pressed to Yuuri’s, lips to his cheeks and the tip of his nose. 

 

“Victor.”

 

“You’re very confident, Yuuri.”

 

Yuuri frowns. There’s a crease between his eyes that Victor can feel with their faces pressed so close, and Victor grins. 

 

“It’s very confident of you to think that you can embarrass a world champion when you weren’t even in the running one year ago.”

 

Victor supposes that he should have expected the shove that follows, and he laughs as he hits the door behind him one more time. Yuuri’s covered half his face with a hand while still managing to glare up at Victor from behind it — he can’t seem to decide which is the more appropriate response. 

 

“Is this supposed to be motivating me?” 

 

“Yuuri,” Victor says warmly, “my Yuuri, who holds the world records now? It’s one of us in this room, and it isn’t me.”

 

Yuuri grips his jacket, the collar zipped all the way to the neck over his costume, and doesn’t say a word. 

 

It’s better perhaps, Victor decides, to let that sink in. He steps away from the door at last. It’s difficult to tear himself away from Yuuri, but Victor makes himself do it — or at least enough to get away with it. Victor simply steps around him, one hand still on the small of Yuuri’s back as he leans over to the bathroom mirrors and sighs.

 

“Ah — my eyeliner smudged.”

 

Yuuri continues to be quiet as Victor rubs the smudges from his eyes. Victor is equally so. They could leave the conversation alone as it is, having already said the most important things; and normally they would. This is the most they have ever really discussed their relationship since the night in their apartment kitchen, and even then, Victor thinks, that itself could hardly count. He pauses, a thumb pressed against his cheekbone as he stares at himself in the streaked bathroom mirror. _I’m a mess,_ he admits, and drops his head forward to the glass. 

 

All this time, there was so much pain that could have been avoided. What else is there? he wonders. Things that Yuuri has misunderstood and that Victor has never dared to ask? That they’ve lasted this long in spite of it all must be nothing short of a miracle. Not that Victor would really know. He’s never had a boyfriend for any longer than a few weeks.

 

Twenty-eight years old, and yet Victor is as new to this and as lost to this as though he were fifteen all over again.

 

The faucet in the sink on which he’s leaning is dripping. Victor stares at it, watching the water droplets fall one by one into the drain. He’s tired, exhausted, and Victor imagines himself as that water in the faucet. It slides slowly down the edges, teetering on the drain before it falls. 

 

“If you embarrass me,” Victor says quietly, without looking up, “I’ll have only myself to blame, Yuuri. And how could I _ever_ be embarrassed by you?”

 

He pushes his hair back and turns around, one hand held out in offering to Yuuri.“I’m your talented coach. If my own student defeats _me,_ then isn’t that a success?”

 

There’s a smile threatening the corners of Yuuri’s lips. Victor is determined to see it — to coax it out, smooth the creases between his eyes, to ease the brightness on his face and know that they will be okay. “That’s easy for you to say,” Yuuri mutters. “Easy when you win no matter what. Winning is second nature for you, Victor.”

 

Victor doesn’t think he’s ever been so determined to defeat something as he is to best Yuuri’s refusal to smile. He could argue. He could say that it _isn’t_ easy, knowing just how to coach Yuuri in the best ways, in the manner that he needs to perform to his very best. He could say that he spent as many hours training in the rink as anyone does, wearing his joints to tearing and his limbs to bruising until sweat soaked every shirt he owned. Or he could even agree: that winning became so second nature that it became no other option, that every medal weighed heavier as Victor had forgotten how to do anything else.

 

Instead he says something easy.

 

“I love you.” Victor speaks in a voice low and gentle. “I love you, Yuuri, and you have this in you. Whether I were competing or not, you have this in you. Show me your skating. Show me what you love and _why_ you love it. That's your theme, Yuuri, isn’t it? Love. That’s what I want to see.You owe me five world championship titles, after all, and I’d rather you get started here.”

 

He opens his arms — always waiting, never pushing, always giving Yuuri the chance to turn away — and Yuuri rushes into them. It’ll never stop being a surprise when he does, because the more Yuuri reaches back, it means the longer he has stayed. Victor swallows hard and presses his face to Yuuri’s shoulder, grips tight around his back and clutches his jacket in his hands. Yuuri is here and warm and holding on. And in this near-empty public bathroom, in front of dirty mirrors and leaking sinks, there’s nowhere Victor would rather be.

 

—————

 

Victor skates first.

 

He’s quite proud of this one, really. Yuri might have knocked into him on his way to the ice, still flushed from his own performance (t _ano, rippon, tano — far too hungry)._ It might have even been an intentional collision, Yuri’s shoulder rammed too hard against Victor’s chest. “Not this time, old man,” he’d muttered, and Victor had smiled and moved on. What a sixteen-year-old has to say on a program he hasn’t even yet seen matters little to Victor Nikiforov.

 

Victor had used an old program for Russian Nationals and Europeans, when he’d only had a little time to prepare. It had been perfectly enough to win, but what is the point of “perfectly enough” when he can do even better? When for once there’s inspiration? And for what felt like the first time in years, Victor had put his heart and soul into this.

 

“Yuuri,” he calls out instead, the elongated _u_ and the gently-rolled _r_ light on his tongue. Yuuri doesn’t like to watch others before he skates, but he’s here, and he looks up. Victor ignores Yakov, leans over the side of the boards and blows him a kiss. 

 

“Don’t ever take your eyes off me.”

 

Because Victor knows, with the laughter bubbling in his throat at the sight of Yuuri waving him away, that for the first time that he can remember he is about to have fun. It isn’t that he can’t feel the soreness in his legs when the music starts and the dance begins. It isn’t that he doesn’t feel the pain in his knee when he lands that quadruple lutz. Victor’s still tired — god, and the air is sharp still in his lungs — except that this time he knows _why_ he’s doing it. 

 

Maybe it was _too_ cheeky of him to choose a song about _aching bones_ and finding _somebody to love._ Cheeky — but honest still, and worth the roars of a crowd that he knows wouldn’t have guessed he’d skate like this to Queen. Its a farewell, Victor thinks, and a good one. Maybe they’ll get the message. And maybe if they don’t —

 

Well, then Victor finally sees the laughter red and unbidden on Yuuri’s cheeks.

 

“I knew you were skating to it,” Yuuri says when he meets Victor at the boards, “but you didn’t have to skate it _at_ me the whole time.”

 

Victor lifts Yuuri’s hand to his lips and kisses his ring, settled careful and bright over the mesh of the familiar costume. “Can’t you find me somebody, Yuuri?” he asks, mock-begging as Yuuri laughs harder in spite of himself. 

 

Yuuri hands Victor his skate guards. “If that was really how you felt,” he says, trying hard to remain solemn, “you should have told me.”

 

“We’ll talk later,” Victor promises, feeling Yakov’s eyes glaring at his back from the kiss-and-cry.

 

“Go,” Yuuri says. “Get your score.”

 

It’s only a world record by a hundredth of a point, but Victor supposes that’s enough. Yuuri doesn’t look surprised, either; or at least he ignores the scores, ignores the announcement, and says nothing when Victor hurries to meet him back at the boards.

 

“Your skating,” Victor reminds him quietly. “Your feelings.”

 

_“You,”_ Yuuri says instead. And there, in front of thousands of people and the flashing of camera lights, he kisses Victor hot and open on the lips.

 

Which is fine, Victor realizes with one hand pressed to his heart and his eyes trained unblinking on Yuuri as he skates away. Because _Eros_ doesn’t _need_ to be about seduction any more. Not when Victor has already long been seduced.

 

All Yuuri needed to do was notice it.

 

It might have been as recently as their stint in the stadium bathroom, when they’d talked about their relationship more than they have since the moment they first kissed. It isn’t as though Yuuri doesn’t look nervous. Victor can see that in the way his hands shake when he takes his starting pose, in the too-vulnerable look on his face that doesn’t go away when the music begins. _Shake it off,_ Victor thinks urgently. _This is your last time with this program._ What it did for _them_ — he wants to see it. 

 

Something about this performance is different. Victor can’t put his finger on it. The nervousness fades quickly as Yuuri sinks into the familiar steps and his body into the music. There’s not a single thing that’s wrong with it: not a foot placed wrong nor awkwardness in those quick flicks of his tongue against his lips, each spin and tilt of his head perfect in motion. Still it’s different, so different — and it isn’t until Yuuri’s spread eagle before the triple axel that Victor understands what it is. 

 

It’s not the confidence of a seductress beckoning a playboy to his bed. It’s a man who’s already welcomed his lover. 

 

Not that it’s any less seductive. That’s the face Yuuri makes when Victor touches him just so — he knows the very place and the pressure, the sounds he’s eased out of him so many times at night. That’s the flutter in his eyes when he moans, and he spreads his arms just a little further, and there, it’s the _vulnerability_ of it all. That’s why the confidence remains, Victor realizes, despite the dissipation of aggression. Because it’s _trust._ Because when Yuuri moves like that, lifts his chin like that, touches his lips like that, he’s letting Victor in. Opening up to a partner and giving everything over to the pleasure he’s promised to make him feel. 

 

Victor feels the air rush from his lungs when Yuuri lifts an arm above his head for the quadruple flip. _I’m an idiot,_ Victor thinks, _a coward_. It’s Yuuri, between the two of them — Yuuri who’s brave enough to take each step forward, and Victor who’s been too frightened but to do anything more than let him in.

 

—————

 

“The thing is,” Yuuri explains, “that letting myself think you were really ready to marry me — it was too much to ask.”

 

He sets aside his half-empty water bottle onto the bleachers beside him and twists the sleeves of his jacket in his hands instead. They’re alone in here, this tiny warm-up rink separate from the larger one in the stadium that’s still being exited and cleaned. It’s dark, and even their hushed voices echo, but somehow this place feels just right.

 

Victor leans an elbow back onto the level where Yuuri is sitting and looks up at him, frowning. Yuuri shakes his head. 

 

“No, please don’t say anything. Not yet. I need to sort it out, and say the things I want to say and learn what I need to know, and… if you talk first, I’m not sure that I will.”

 

Victor bites his cheek and moves his hand to Yuuri’s knee. Yuuri cover’s Victor’s hand with is own and grips it tight. This is a comfort. He doesn’t look at Victor as he continues, choosing instead to focus anywhere else: on his shoes, the mesh of his costume peeking out beneath the sleeves of his jacket, scoresheet from the day grasped firm until it wrinkles in his free hand. The paper seems to be his greatest source of comfort, and Victor can’t blame him. _120.01._ The disbelief of his name on top of Victor’s, and the two small letters that confirm that two records now belong to _him_ instead. It isn’t a Worlds title yet — but whether or not Yuuri wins in the next few days, this will be victory enough for now.

 

Yuuri sighs and shifts. He starts to shrug his jacket off, then changes his mind and pulls it back on. He bites his lip. Victor doesn’t interrupt him, but he waits, looking up at Yuuri with the silent patience of a man who has forever. 

 

“I really did mean them as engagement rings,” he says finally, quietly. “Deep down. And I’d hoped you understood. One day I’d ask you again, but it still made me happy when you said it aloud. At least — until I misunderstood you.”

 

Victor has to force himself to remain silent. He grips Yuuri’s hand more tightly. 

 

“Victor, that short program.” Yuuri closes his eyes tightly as though he’s bracing himself for a question. “Did you… choose that because of how you really felt?”

 

Of all the people Victor might have expected to understand the real meaning behind his program, he supposes that he’d always, without thinking of it, expected it to be Yuuri. Yuuri _understands_ what’s said on the ice — in a way his body paints pictures so clearly, he’s an artist who fully knows how to work the brush. Victor looks at their entwined hands for a moment, turning them over and back as he thinks about how to answer.

 

“I just thought it might be fun at first,” he admits. “I hadn’t done anything like Queen in a while. But yes, Yuuri. I loved figure skating for a very long time. And I do still love it — but I’m _tired._ It _was_ fun. But that was when I realized it: that was the first time I’d ever had that much fun choreographing a program in years. And if you hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t have even wanted to finish.”

 

Somehow saying it aloud makes it harder. Victor feels his throat tighten, but he continues anyway.

 

“I’ve been the one to beat for years. I’m twenty-eight years old now, and in our world, that’s ancient. What else can I give to the sport that I haven’t already given? And _why_ must I always give everything to figure skating? Why can’t I do anything for _me?”_

 

The bitterness is as heavy on his tongue as it is in his heart, which means that surely Yuuri must taste it, too. Victor knows Yuuri well enough by now to know that even when Yuuri knows it’s not directed at him, he worries about it anyway (if he’s the cause of it, if he could have prevented it, if he’s made it only worse); and this conversation has both of them on edge enough already. Victor swallows it back despite the taste and rubs a thumb across the back of Yuuri’s hand.

 

“I didn’t really want to compete,” he admits at last. “I knew I could be okay with it, as I have been. But it isn’t what I would have chosen. I have a new path now. And ever since I met you, all I’ve wanted has been you.”

 

Yuuri lifts his free hand to bite his thumb, hot and red and glassy-eyed. He doesn’t look at Victor, and Victor sees his chest rising and falling just a little too fast, a little too much. Yuuri lifts his eyes to the ceiling and takes in one deep breath before demanding his reply: stumbling, desperate, and just a little too loud.

 

“If you didn’t want to compete, then why did you, Victor? Why did you look like that at the Grand Prix Final, like everyone else was so — when I had just —”

“You _wanted_ me to compete.” The panic that had set in when Yuuri had told him to end it. When Yuuri had said it was his last skate on the ice, and Victor had known that it wasn’t just a waste of Yuuri’s talent, but that without figure skating they weren’t going to _have_ anything left together. That was what Victor Nikiforov was good for, of course — and he’d been a fool to let himself hope for any more. “You wanted me to do it. And whether you stayed with me or not, I’d do anything if you asked it of me.”

 

“…Oh, God.” Yuuri’s voice cracks. “Oh God, Victor, I don’t want that kind of — I don’t want you to — I thought _you_ wanted to compete, I thought — ”

 

Victor lowers his forehead to Yuuri’s knee and rests it there.

 

“It seems we should have spoken months ago, back then.”

 

He’s met with silence.

 

Victor doesn’t mind the silence. It gives him a moment to count his heartbeats in the rhythm of his breathing, to listen to Yuuri sigh and stutter and find his thoughts. It isn’t a comfortable silence, but it isn’t a bad one, either; unlike the nights in Barcelona after Yuuri had called them to an end, when it had pressed to heavily on Victor’s shoulders he’d thought he’d collapse before he could even scream. At least this is all right. He can feel Yuuri’s hand brush through his hair before he sighs, and Victor closes his eyes to listen.

 

“I guess… I was nervous.” Yuuri stills then and matches the quiet of the rink. His voice is low, and it isn’t steady, but he stumbles through with all the determination of someone who’s already come this far. “I was nervous for the Grand Prix Final already — and you’d said you were just going to take me to win it, and we hadn’t ever talked about what you’d do then. After Rostelecom, I thought, my time with you was short… but I could pretend for a little while. That I’d have you for much longer. I just got _nervous._ And then I saw you during the men’s short, watching everyone else, and I thought — you had to go back. I had been selfish to ask you to stay, and you could get more out of other skaters than you ever could out of me. It was probably good that I hadn’t ever asked aloud. I knew you’d stay with me, even if it hurt you. And I didn’t want to do that to you. I guess I just — I hurt you more by not asking.”

 

Victor says nothing but a quiet, “Yes.”

 

Except, he knows, that he isn’t off the hook, either. Victor sits up and pulls Yuuri’s hand to his mouth, so that he can kiss every finger and every knuckle and just have the taste of him at his lips. He hadn’t said anything to Yuuri, either. He’d simply done it. He’d been afraid, so afraid — Victor pauses with Yuuri’s ring to his lips and his eyes squeezed tightly shut. He’d been too afraid to argue back, because Yuuri would have left him all the sooner.

 

What idiots they _both_ are. What frightened, stupid idiots.

 

“I know you’ve always loved me.” Yuuri leans in, and Victor knows that if he opens his eyes he’ll see Yuuri just in front of him: earnest, honest, scared. “I _know_ you do, but there’s a part of me that can’t help but think — if you don’t have skating any more, if you quit because of _me,_ because I was so selfish, then you’ll always resent me for it.”

 

Now Victor does look up. He was right about what he’d see when he opened his eyes. Yuuri’s so close that the tips of their noses brush, and Victor doesn’t dare move. One of them, he notices, is holding his breath. 

 

“Yuuri,” Victor whispers. “When I’m old and wrinkly and cannot walk, I don’t want to be on the ice. I want _you_ with me before anything. You’ve taught me how it feels to love and to live again, and if I were ever to resent you for anything, it would be for not believing this.”

 

Yuuri laughs, and then he cries, and he laughs again. He doesn’t let go of Victor’s hand even as he wipes the tears from beneath his glasses. He uses Victor’s knuckles instead, and Victor uncurls a finger from his tight grip on Yuuri’s palm to brush it lightly over Yuuri’s cheek. It’s him, Victor realizes with some surprise. _He’s_ the one who wasn’t breathing. He’s light-headed and dizzy and though he doesn’t quite know why, he finds himself crying for the second time today again, too.

 

“Ask me, Victor,” Yuuri says. “Ask me to marry you. This time for real.”

 

“No,” Victor answers, and there’s a smile curling on his lips. “You’ve already asked me, and I’ve already said yes. It’d be mean to make me be the one to do it. If you’re dissatisfied, then I’ll expect an even better proposal. And I’d like you to do it soon, Yuuri. I don’t like waiting.”

 

It had seemed like a good thing that this rink was here and empty and not for public use. Inside, with somewhere between hundreds to thousands of people milling throughout the stadium and newscasters looking for footage, this is their own silent world. It isn’t until nearly an hour later when they’re interrupted by custodial staff and ordered back to their hotel that Victor remembers: the whole rest of the world is open for them now, and they have all the time they could ever wish.

 

—————

 

One week later, still jet-lagged in the midst of what feels like the entire town of Hasetsu’s celebration party for Yuuri at the Yu-Topia Onsen, Victor calls Yuuri to his old room in the inn.

 

“I want to do it here.” He stares at the couch left in the corner, the mattress left unmade and free even of pillows or sheets. “While I’m tired, and happy, and warm, and I have you.”

 

“Victor?” 

 

Yuuri is, of course, puzzled. Victor had offered no explanation. And he feels bad, asking Yuuri here now when the celebration is meant for _him,_ meant for _his_ success (Yuuri might argue that Victor deserves the celebration just as much with second place, but Victor knows the town isn’t here for an unfamiliar man from Russia). But he’d had to be selfish just this once. If he didn’t do it now, Victor knows he never will. 

 

He looks up at the ceiling and closes his eyes.

 

“Before we tell anyone else, Yuuri,” Victor explains, “I want to tell my mother.”

 

It’s a little dizzying standing with his eyes closed and his head back, but Victor does it anyway. He keeps himself upright, listening to the faint sounds of clinking glasses coming from somewhere down below, and moves in surprise only when Yuuri’s fingers brush against his hand.

 

“You don’t have to,” Yuuri says.

 

It’s the first time Victor has ever even mentioned his mother to Yuuri at all.

 

Victor bites his cheek and holds tight to Yuuri’s hand. He stares at the wooden ceiling above, low and familiar. He worries that he might break his fiancé’s fingers, but even as he tries to force himself to let go he can’t hold on any less firmly than before. 

 

“I’m going to invite her to our wedding.”

 

“You don’t have to.”

 

And Victor feels, wildly, as though he might laugh. Yuuri doesn’t _know._ He can’t _possibly_ know. No one knows, not even the nosiest of press, and yet there in a single moment Yuuri has wordlessly understood.

 

“I know.” Victor lowers his head and looks at Yuuri instead. This is a good sight, he thinks. A comforting one. “I don’t even want her there. And yet despite that, I’m going to invite her, simply because of who she is. I wish I’d never even known she’s my mother,” he says finally, and the admission is there, spoken and aloud, and it rings hotly in the air. Yuuri doesn’t interrupt. “I wish I’d never known, because it’s unfair that she could choose to leave me, and I didn’t even have a choice at all.”

 

Yuuri lets go of Victor’s hand, and for a brief moment Victor thinks he’s getting ready to bid farewell. But it’s _Yuuri,_ he reminds himself, Yuuri who wants to stay close to him and doesn’t need to say a word. Sure enough Yuuri’s arms are around his waist instead and his head resting on Victor’s chest. “Call her,” Yuuri tells him. “I’ll be right here.”

 

So what Yuuri tells him to do, Victor listens. Victor trusts that even when he lets go, the warmth at his side won’t be going anywhere; that Yuuri will stay solid beside him, keeping everything painful locked in his arms so that Victor doesn’t have to think about it spilling over. He pulls out his phone, takes two deep breaths, and dials. 

 

_“Zdravstvuyte,”_ he says when she picks up. “Mama.”

 

She never expects it when he calls. Victor suspects she doesn’t even have his number saved based on the silences that always greet him with her answer. Not that he could blame her, really. Victor _doesn’t_ ever call her. Only once in a while around the holidays every few years, and then just when he remembers. She never calls him. So it’s not out of line, those six seconds before she says: “Vitya?”

 

Victor decides he’d rather not bother with the pleasantries. 

 

“I’m getting married.”

 

The words are strange in Russian. Victor frowns when he says them. He’s used to it in English now, recently though he and Yuuri have only just begun to say it. He’s tried it a few times in Japanese. But this is the first time Victor has said the words aloud in Russian, and when he listens to them, he feels suddenly as though he’s been sucked underwater with no air left to breathe. 

 

He’s five, looking at the greyed-out photographs of his mother. He’s twelve, wondering why people ever got married. He’s fifteen, telling his first boyfriend that he never wanted anything so binding. And then he’s eighteen, twenty, twenty-five, twenty-seven, watching people through glassed-over eyes as they hold hands, and he thinks he can’t even be envious that it isn’t his, because it was never something that was meant to be his in the first place.

 

At least her shock gives him plenty of time to find himself.

 

“Oh,” Irina says at last. “Congratulations.”

 

Then nothing. They don’t know how to talk to each other. They never have, not since he stopped explaining his wet bed as the fault of his favorite teddy, who refused to fight away the monsters by the door. Yuuri whispers a kiss just above Victor’s collar. She’s a stranger, he thinks. A stranger who’s been forced into his life, hanging awkwardly on the edges, held by some grip Victor has never before realized that he doesn’t need to be holding.

 

“He’s a world champion,” Victor says loudly. It’s _too_ loud; he doesn’t care. “He’s Japanese. He just broke all my world records last week.”

 

“That’s wonderful,” says Irina: hesitant, unsure. “I mean —Well. What’s his — or when is — ”

 

“We don’t have a date set. But when we do, you’re invited. So take that, though I’m sure you’ll be busy.” And Victor forces the brightest smile onto his face that he can muster and pretends the water-stained mark on the wall is her face. “After that, we don’t have to pretend to like being in each other’s lives any longer.”

 

He expects, of course, for this silence to be longer than six seconds.

 

“Okay,” she finally responds, “Okay. Then that’s what we’ll do. Vitya, look. You must have wished — I wouldn’t blame you if you’d wished — that I’d been with you as you were growing up. But it’s good your father raised you. You’ve done so well, I know. Better than you ever would have with me. Aren’t you happy, the way things are now?”

 

It’s a question so unspeakably unfair that Victor blinks circles and swallows the burning in his throat.

 

“Yes,” he says, and at least he can say this and mean it. “Yes, Irina. I am happier now than I ever knew anyone could be.”

 

Victor hangs up the phone.

 

Hanging up on her is always strange. Victor never really feels as though he’s said goodbye to anyone important; they speak little enough for him even really to know anything about her. Yet he always still feels as though something _big_ has happened, an event in his life that can’t be brushed over nor forgotten. He frowns at that water stain on the wall. It’s annoying, really, that his heart is running far more quickly than it should be. He didn't ask for it to do that. 

 

There’s a lot that Victor didn’t ask to have but has now anyway: fame, for one. Paparazzi. The pile of trophies and medals lying dusty in a box somewhere in his apartment back in Russia, where he’s reluctant to return even one last time to gather his things for one final, certain move. The fear, the fright, the held breath of looking at another man and wanting — oh God, so desperately wanting nothing more than to kiss him.

 

Yuuri’s still there. 

 

He hasn’t moved nor said a word in the last few minutes, and Victor rests his cheek on Yuuri’s head. He covers Yuuri’s hands around his waist with his own and taps a quiet rhythm with his fingers, silent, soft, and slow. Victor can’t help but wonder how much Yuuri understood. Yuuri certainly hadn’t become fluent in Russian in the short span of a couple months that they’d lived in St. Petersburg; his conversational Russian is passable, but not for anything too drawn out nor complex. Victor supposes that Yuuri could have understood every word. But even if he hadn’t heard a word of it, Victor’s quite sure that the gist of things, at least, wouldn't be too hard to guess.

 

He runs a fingertip across the bone in Yuuri’s wrist, then traces up and down along his forearm. Yuuri sighs: a quiet, still contentment in the darkness of the empty room. It’s become so normal and comfortable, holding him and being held like this. Victor knows precisely the way Yuuri’s chest will rise and fall against his back as he breathes, the way he’ll hum when Victor kisses his temple, how he’ll stretch up on his toes and press a lingering kiss to Victor’s jaw. Victor closes his eyes. He has never known anyone so intimately as this. He has never wanted to hold on like this, wrapped up in warmth and a feeling tight in his chest that he has never known before.

 

“Did you mean it?” Yuuri murmurs. His lips move lightly down Victor’s neck. “When you said that you’re happy?” 

 

Yuuri turns in his arms, and Victor looks at him. His eyes are round behind his glasses, quite unable to settle still as they flick from Victor’s face to the floor and back again. They’re in the way, Victor thinks. He grasps the hem of Yuuri’s shirt tight in one hand as he traces his knuckles along Yuuri’s cheeks, stopping only to nudge his glasses up, settle them on top of Yuuri’s head where they hold back his hair. It isn’t a perfect resting place, and bunches of Yuuri’s dark hair whisper free to fall half-unbidden across his forehead.

 

“Oh, Yuuri,” Victor whispers. “Yuuri.”

 

They stare at each other with nothing more than a few breaths between them. 

 

It’s slow when they start kissing again. Victor’s not quite sure who does it first. His hand doesn’t move once from its place on Yuuri’s cheek, and Yuuri leans into him, his eyes fluttering half-closed. Yuuri has a hand on the small of Victor’s back, and Victor has moved close enough that his half-bent leg rests on the inside of Yuuri’s thigh. The air, he thinks, is still too thin, and he does his best to find it against Yuuri’s lips. Yuuri breathes him in and whispers air into his lungs, through the tug of his teeth on Victor’s lips and a tongue that moves just a little too much. Or perhaps it’s the air that’s in fact _too_ much, for Victor’s chest swells suddenly so full that he feels that he might burst. He pushes back: his hand slides beneath Yuuri’s shirt and dances across the small of his back, and Yuuri steadies him with a hard grip on his butt, pulling him up, pulling him in. Victor kisses harder. Never, never, never, he thinks — never again does he want to let go — but even if he does, then maybe, just maybe, they might just both still be safe.

 

They kiss until they’re interrupted, when Mari’s voice floats down the hall and calls them back. It’s Yuuri who breaks first. His sister’s voice rings again, and he freezes with Victor’s back pressed to the wall and their hands caught beneath each other’s clothes. _“Yuuri,”_ she calls again, and Yuuri’s glasses slip all the way back down his nose as he starts to giggle. 

 

“I’m not going in there,” Mari tells them from behind the door and the distance of the hallway, “so hurry it up. I think there’s a surprise cake planned, or something.” 

 

At which point Victor starts laughing, too.

 

Yuuri, at least, had been trying to hold it in, but Victor makes no effort of the same sort. Yuuri shushes him but in doing so loses the bare control he’d been holding on the laughter that bursts forth then from his lips. The sight is so endearing that Victor practically stumbles into Yuuri as he doubles over to muffle his laughter in Yuuri’s shirt, and Yuuri clings on tight, just barely holding them on their feet. 

 

“Let’s go,” Yuuri gasps. “I think we should.”

 

Victor acquiesces, but he doesn’t let go of Yuuri as they stumble out the door with their arms still around each other and tears of mirth still in their eyes. Mari eyes them suspiciously from the staircase, on Yuuri’s still-slipping glasses and Victor’s strangely rumpled shirt.

 

“I don’t want to know,” she says before either of them can speak a word. “Hurry it up, lovebirds.”

 

Which is well and good, because truthfully Victor doesn’t quite know what’s so funny, either. He’s wiping it from his eyes as they rejoin the gathering in the resort lobby down below, where they’re greeted with cheers and applause from everyone gathered. Not that it’s necessary — Yuuri and Victor both have already been applauded, when the celebration began an hour ago. Yuuri waves it off and looks up at Victor.

 

_“Pozdravleniya,”_ he says and touches the warm flush on Victor’s cheek.

 

And then he lets go. Yuuri is called away, so Victor lets him be (despite the lingering hand he leaves on Yuuri’s arm until Yuuri is too far away for him to touch any longer). Victor watches him, content in his solitude for only a minute. Hiroko waves him over, and Victor goes to her, not expecting the small push she gives to his back in the direction of Yuuri’s father. 

 

“He wants to teach you,” she says in English with a wink, and she hands him a stovetop pot.

 

Toshiya is waiting in the kitchen with food laid out and dishes ready to be plated. He welcomes Victor with a hug and a pointed order of where to put the pot, and Victor obeys: their common language in gestures only, his mimicking Toshiya’s exaggerated care given to their meal. Victor glances out the kitchen door only once, where Yuuri is waiting to look back at him. Yuuri smiles.

 

The walls around him are dark and worn and old, but they are full of people and light and warmth. This is a home, Victor realizes -- a home far richer than any gold.

**Author's Note:**

> It's a pretty common idea in my circle of fandom that Victor was raised by lesbian mothers. I'm definitely into it, but I also think that simply on the basis of what the show has given us (or hasn't, depending on how you look at it), the reality is much sadder. I'd like to be proven wrong in the future, though.
> 
> This fic was really just borne out of a desire to write how I feel about... well, everything. My writing style isn't great for anything that normally goes over 5k, but this has honestly been banging on the doors to be written since January. So I've finally gotten it done.
> 
> Yes, I know 120 is pretty ridiculous as a short program score, but Yurio's 118 was literally impossible, and it's simply a fact that Yuuri is going to break it so I had to work with what we have ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ If anyone were going to get a 120 it'd be Yuuri, anyway.
> 
> If you have any questions or anything, please ask me either here or on [Tumblr](http://jinlian.tumblr.com/), where you can also [find my fic posted](http://jinlian.tumblr.com/post/163733254887/take-me-higher).
> 
> See you next level!


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